AVP League: Nitro top the standings at 7-1 after third week

VolleyballMag photographer Mark Rigney was in San Diego and his best shots follow in a gallery.

The fans in Viejas Arena and those watching on the Bally Live stream expected chirping and barking from Trevor Crabb and Chase Budinger, but settled for crickets.

Crabb, the AVP’s resident “bad boy,” was on his best behavior Sunday afternoon, as was Budinger, who had given Trevor “The Shove,” which produced a memorable video clip that instantly went viral on social media.

As both players stuck to volleyball during their AVP League match in San Diego, Crabb and partner Theo Brunner, representing the Miami Mayhem, recorded a workmanlike 15-12, 15-11 victory over Budinger and Miles Evans, playing for the San Diego Smash.

Theo’s intimidating 6-foot-7 presence at the net (three pivotal blocks in the first set) and a spate of attack errors by Evans (who had six in the match while hitting .158) paved the way for the Manhattan Beach Open champions to flip the script on the U.S. Olympians, who had beaten Crabb-Brunner in a three-setter a month ago on Chicago’s Oak Street Beach. That contentious match was peppered with back-and-forth trash talk that culminated with Budinger aggressively shoving Crabb to the sand.

No such fireworks were ignited during Week 3 of the AVP League, which moved indoors for the first time, playing on hard-packed “jumper’s sand” at the spacious basketball venue on the campus of San Diego State.

Trevor and Theo broke open a tight first set late with three “real” points. Crabb scored in transition, tooling former NBA player Budinger’s block, Brunner rejected Evans’ wrist-away “shoot” and Miles’ cross-court spike attempt hit the net and flew wide, putting Budinger-Evans in an inescapable 14-11 hole.

The second set turned earlier, when Budinger and Evans made back-to-back hitting errors that put Crabb-Brunner up 9-5, a four-point advantage that stuck until the end. Trevor and Theo improved to 4-2 all-time against Chase and Miles. Overall, Brunner attacked at .545 efficiency (7-for-11 with one error), while Crabb hit .533 (eight kills on 15 errorless attempts) and made seven digs.

“I always play boring volleyball and just try to do my thing,” Brunner said about the ”Shove” ballyhoo that surrounded the match. “I don’t do well when I get hyped up like that – Trevor does. I kept waiting for some sort of explosion to happen, but it never came.”

In his postmatch comments, Crabb said that dialing down the heat meter helped his team’s performance, but he nonetheless couldn’t help but toss a little more gas on the flames to keep the rivalry percolating.

“The last match (against Budinger and Evans) was a little more emotional,” Trevor said. “This time we kept it a little more business. We know that if we just play our game and lock in, we are the better team any day of the week.”

That not-so-thinly-veiled barb echoed what Crabb said after winning the post-Olympics MBO: That he and Brunner should have represented the United States in Paris. Budinger and Evans passed them to gain the second spot in the late stages of the qualifying process, then finished in a tie for ninth in the Games, winning a Lucky Losers match before falling to eventual bronze medalists Anders Mol and Christian Sorum of Norway in the first knockout round.

A ‘W” against Budinger and Evans took some of the sting out of a three-set loss (13-15, 15-9, 15-10) by Trevor and Theo on Saturday night to Miles Partain and Andy Benesh of the Dallas Dream. Brunner was a beast at the net in the first set with four blocks, but the U.S. Olympians and Chicago Heritage Series champs dramatically upped the serving pressure in the second and third. The 6-foot-9 Benesh ripped five aces with his sizzling top-spin jumper.

“Our strategy is to serve aggressively,” Andy said. “I didn’t have it going in the first set, missed a couple pretty badly, but I stuck with it. They are such a good team that if they’re not out of system, they’re going to side-out at 90 percent. We knew it was needed.”

Partain, 22, said that his tall partner, “was funneling (on the block) really well, served great, and I got a lot of out-of-system balls (to dig) in the pocket.” The flashy lefty racked up 17 kills on 24 attempts against four errors, hitting .542, with nine digs.

Partain and Benesh – whose entertaining jump-setting offense drew oohs and ahhs from the crowd and numerous open-net swings – are the only undefeated team on the men’s side of the AVP League. They improved to 4-0 by dispatching Taylor Crabb and Taylor Sander of the New York Nitro on Sunday 15-11, 17-15. After the Taylors, who also came in unbeaten, held off two match points, the nip-and-tuck second set ended when Benesh blocked an on-two option attempt by Sander, who got only six attacks in the match and hit .000, with two kills against two errors. Benesh notched nine kills on 12 swings (.750) and cracked two aces, but Miles praised him for another skill.

“Andy is a great transition setter, a really, really good hand-setter, one of the best in the world, seriously, top two or top three,” said Partain, who dug 10 balls while hitting .600 (13-for-20 with one error).

The Dream were 3-1 on the weekend and moved up to third place in the AVP League standings at 5-3 with 13 tiebreaker points. Hailey Harward and Kylie Deberg won their first League match on Saturday, pulling a mild upset over the Mayhem’s April Ross and Alix Klineman in a 56-minute three-set barnburner (15-12, 12-15, 18-16). On Sunday, however, Hailey and Kylie were thumped 15-11, 15-8 by the Nitro’s Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes. The U.S. Olympians and reigning world champions are the only 4-0 pair among the women, also handling Geena Urango and Toni Rodriguez of the Smash 15-12, 15-11 on Saturday. All of the League victories by Cheng and Hughes have come in straight sets.

The Nitro top the standings at 7-1 (with 19 tiebreaker points). The Taylors went 1-1, defeated Budinger and Evans 15-13, 12-15, 15-11 on Saturday. The Mayhem are in second at 5-3 (16 tiebreaker points). On Sunday, Ross and Klineman pulled out a three-set victory (15-9, 11-15, 15-11) over Urango and Rodriguez to draw the Mayhem even on the weekend.

The Smash lost all four of their matches and found themselves in a 2-6 hole (with seven tiebreaker points).

All of the action from Week 3 of the AVP League was streamed live on the free Bally Live app and the matches have been archived on the AVP’s free YouTube channel. The crowd on Saturday night at Viejas Arena looked to be the largest drawn during any of the sessions during the first three weeks.

Meanwhile, the four teams that were idle in Week 3 will play this coming weekend, when the AVP League moves to suburban Austin, Texas. Doubleheaders are scheduled on Oct. 5 and 6 at the 8,700-seat H-E-B Center at Cedar Park.

Here are the lineups for the fourth of eight regular-season AVP League weekends:

Saturday 

Brooklyn Blaze (1-3; Cody Caldwell and Seain Cook, 1-1; Terese Cannon and Megan Kraft, 0-2) vs. LA Launch (1-3; Tim Bomgren and Troy Field, 0-2; Betsi Flint and Julia Scoles, 1-1).

Austin Aces (2-2; Paul Lotman and Billy Allen, 0-2; Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss, 2-0) vs. Palm Beach Passion (1-3; Phil Dalhausser and Avery Drost, 0-2; Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson, 1-1).

Sunday

Blaze vs. Aces and Launch vs. Passion.

The results from each match in the series will go toward determining the four qualifiers for the bracket-style championship rounds on Nov. 9 and 10 at the Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California. The first criterion for advancing to the playoffs is team winning percentage.

Click on any image to view photographer Mark Rigney’s best shots from the weekend:

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